By: Sello Theletsane
A collective of former Robben Island political prisoners has thrown its weight behind Minister of Tourism Lindiwe Sisulu’s article on democracy and the judiciary.
The Robben Island Ex Political Prisoners International Human Rights Program said in the South Africa of post-1994, the ranks of the African National Congress (ANC) Tripartite Alliance are plagued by a cocktail of self-serving political ambitions, and untold greed for power and wealth reminiscent of the apartheid era.
The organisation’s spokesperson, Sipho Singiswa, said these ambitions are pursued even if it means the continuation of extreme levels of unabated poverty, starvation and ultimate deaths of indigenous people at the hands of the state security and corporate giants.
“This is a systematic betrayal of the South African liberation struggle and its foot
soldiers. Like their apartheid regime predecessors, the ANC/Tripartite Alliance leadership has gradually degenerated
into wannabe Oligarchs who are devoid of any deep revolutionary drive to free Native African people from an oppressive western-based economic value system,” he said.
Appeasing the West
Singiswa said this was done at the expense of the liberation struggle values and the people. He sad this particular brand of leadership is about being much closer to the London and Washington-based economic masters represented in Africa by multi-national corporate giants such as Anglo-American; Anglo Plat;
Lonmin; Gold Fields; BHP Billiton; X-strata; Investec, and the banking industry, to name a few.
“There is also the uncomfortable reality that some of these now prominent leaders, are double agents and the ASKARIS of the liberation struggle who had used their ill-gotten funds to buy support and implement the agenda of their White capital paymasters to hinder the implementation of meaningful socio-economic transformation policies that are aimed to address the racially skewed social and economic imbalances in a post-liberation struggle South Africa,” he said.
Singiswa added that some of the problematic leaders had no known history in the liberation struggle before establishing the United Democratic Front (UDF). He said many had used the UDF as a springboard to infiltrate the ANC’s
leadership structures with the critical objective to weaken the ANC’s resolve to implement a pan Africanist and
pro-poor socio-economic policy.
“Some of these ‘so-called’ leaders were recruited and already on the payroll
of the giant extraction industry as well as the CIA/USAID/MI6 long before the formation of the UDF was officially announced to the public. In anticipation of the inevitable official fall of the apartheid government and the associated fear of diminished socioeconomic status of the white population, in the mid-1980s, the apartheid regime’s intelligence agencies
and the leaders of the White corporate giants, intensified the recruitment drive to cultivate and harvest a particular breed of leadership that would be, ultimately, converted into figure-heads, spin-doctors and buffer zones that protect an inhumane economic system in return for a minority share in majority White-owned corporate businesses that are officially sanctioned in London, Washington and the Eurozone country capitals,” he said.
Captured ANC
Singiswa said they all but captured the ANC. He further stated that it was a well-established fact that in South Africa, the White monopoly capital-controlled media is highly politicised along racial and ideological lines. He said it plays a crucial role in influencing the general public perception and opinion in how the public understands political developments.
“It must, therefore, not surprise critical thinkers that the business-friendly mainstream media attacked Tourism
Minister Lindiwe Sisulu for expressing her views about the need to review the South African Constitution and the Judiciary’s ineffective responses to its obligation to address the shortcomings in the Eurocentric composition of both the Constitution and Judiciary. We understand this is necessary to hasten the implementation processes of decolonised restorative justice policies, including Land Restitution and the National Health Insurance, for the collective good of the economically subjugated Native African majority in South Africa,” he said.
Singiswa added that for the past few years, Native African business leaders have complained that all significant government infrastructural and financial development projects announced by President Cyril Ramaphosa were designed to favour major White-owned companies.
There has also been an increase in protests by labour unions against a lack of or poor social services delivery, economic and environmental racism, appalling labour conditions, low salaries and discrimination at the workplace.
“It cannot go unnoticed that the chronic poverty, unemployment, poor housing, lack of equal access to primary healthcare, quality education, housing, lack of access to ancestral land and its natural resources, still mirrors the apartheid era which brings to sharp focus the question: For Whom Was The South Constitution Designed and
Meant To Protect? Who Are Its Real Authors?”
“It is a fact that the endemic poverty, unemployment and homelessness/landlessness in South Africa is, by design, directly linked to historic White colonial and current economic invasion and misappropriation of African ancestral land and enforcement of legalised racist laws under an equally skewed constitution that bestowed social privileges to the minority settler communities that are denied to the Indigenous African community,” he said.
Threat to white dominance
Singiswa maintains that when Sisulu acknowledged these concerns, the White corporate sector felt its economic dominance threatened and, with the support of its elitist gatekeepers in civil society and the press, reacted viciously.
“In seeking to punish and isolate her for her supposedly vitriolic attack on the Judiciary, it is using its well-funded massive propaganda platforms and connectivity to the ANC leadership structures to try and silence her voice and marginalise her by swaying public opinion against her. The well-orchestrated media campaign is structured such as to willfully influence and impose the White will onto the Native African cry for reparations, economic equality and land restitution,” he said.
Manufactured outrage
It aims to manufacture public consent and outrage against Sisulu while simultaneously telling, or lobbying, if not ordering, President Ramaphosa to punish Sisulu for speaking the truth from her Native African woman’s perspective and informed insight into the plight of the native majority, he added.
Singiswa further added that Native African people must not be surprised by the constant tendency of corporatised ANC elements and self-serving Foundations, such as the Ahmed Khathrada Foundation, Council for the Advancement of the SA Constitution, Defend our Democracy Campaign, Freedom Under Law, corporate NGOs and self-appointed political ‘icons’ masquerading as Black comrades, always come out guns blazing, in these matters.
“This makes it clear to us that their mandate is to support the White hegemonic narrative and the donor-funded campaign to police, marginalise and suppress the authentic and independent views of the Native African people. Many of these activists had used the UDF politics and platforms as a cover to infiltrate the ANC to help facilitate the White capitalist agenda of gradually converting the ANC leadership
structures into instruments of the continued economic subjugation of the indigenous African people, while
simultaneously playing the role of pacifying their anger with rehashed empty rhetoric. They continue to benefit handsomely from their co-option and assimilation into bourgeois politics along with new lifestyles in the leafy traditionally White suburbs, mostly due to dubious business dealings and instantly acquired wealth,” Singiswa said.
Not on our watch
He also adds that as liberation struggle veterans, they cannot help but ask the question: On what or whose authority, lived liberation struggle and Native African experience, does this echelon of predominantly minority group bourgeois
activists make such pronouncements to police and demonise Sisulu’s right of reflection and freedom of expression on views that are widely shared by the majority Indigenous African people?
“The liberation struggle veterans and Robben Island former political prisoners are in no doubt that the real objective behind the recent spate of attacks on Sisulu is to confuse ordinary citizens about the urgent need to review the South African Constitution. They exploit their unfettered access to the White-controlled media platforms for social engineering and manufacture public consent to their suppression of the authentic voices of the Native African people. It is part of a well-funded conspiracy to co-opt and colonise the minds of the native African people into embracing a Whitist view of themselves and the world in general,” he said.
Singiswa further attacked the white elitist who is trying to make them believe that Sisulu, who has years of experience as a Cabinet Minister in various portfolios, now lacks the skills and expertise to introspect about why Native African poverty is persistent. At the same time, minority communities continue to enjoy the historic apartheid benefits.
“These media demagogues want the Native African to believe that by questioning the persistent and unjust socio-economic power dynamics between the have and have-nots in the post-apartheid South Africa, Sisulu has committed a cardinal offence. In their distorted view of the Native African, Minister Sisulu apparently, lacks the experience to express, without their endorsement, an opinion on such critical issues impacting the lives of the Native African people. In this scenario, they are the only socio-economic brokers and it is only them who have the expertise, the exclusive rights and privilege, to make such determinations for the Native African people,” he said.
ANC resolutions
Singiswa added that Sisulu said nothing out of line with the ANC’s 54th National Conference Declaration: “We remain
committed to the founding values of the struggle for a humane, just, equitable, democratic and free world”.
This is a declaration of commitment to a desire for “a better life for all, a better life for all of us equally as South Africans, a better life for our continent, and a better life for the world, embedded in a desire to create and preserve peace”.
“Despite the multitude of objections from those seeking a corporatise ANC, both within and outside its leadership ranks, to her credit, Lindiwe Sisulu has demonstrated an in-depth consistency in her comprehension of our liberation struggle, why we fought and made such sacrifices for the total liberation of our people, rather than piece-meal White concessions in foreign direct investment deals that continue to trap our people in an endless cycle of poverty,” he said.
